this post was submitted on 27 Mar 2025
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How to get rid of Mastercard and Visa? (feddit.org)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by minilemmy@feddit.org to c/buyeuropean@feddit.uk
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Hey guys!

Visa and Mastercard are the 8th and 15th biggest companies in the world, worth more than 1.1T USD (!!!).

For any purchase made with a credit or debit cards and you give them 2-3% of your money.

That's one the biggest waste of money from EU you can imagine.

I'm trying to find viable alternatives but except paying cash it seem there is no real alternative. Even in where I live there is an alternate payment service but they take the money from my mastercard, duh...

And the idea would be to have something even my grandma can use, not some nerdy solution, any thoughts?

Edit: Bitcoin would be a solution if widely adopted, but more realistic would be something accepted by every cashier machine, and if possible using the NFC of your phone, a kind of "Apple/Google" Pay, that goes directly from your bank to the bank's shop. Where I live all debit cards are either visa or mastercard...

Edit2: There is an EU initiative that seem to be starting with WERO, never heard of it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Payments_Initiative

Edit3: It seem that Paysafecard and Skrill are EU solutions and sometimes proposed in the payment method, but not with STRIPE payment solutions

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[โ€“] Eiri@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Debit card maybe?

[โ€“] minilemmy@feddit.org 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

my debit card is mastercard...

[โ€“] Eiri@lemmy.ca 0 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Dang it. I had forgotten that most debit cards now have partnerships like that.

However, remember that debit card transaction fees are typically quite a bit lower (no exact numbers to support my claim, but for instance my hairdresser only takes credit for larger payments; small ones she only accepts debit, or she would just lose too much to the credit card company).

So you wouldn't NOT support MasterCard/Visa, but they WOULD receive less money.

As for non-American credit cards, someone asked a similar question on Reddit and got technically valid but unsatisfying responses.

For instance:

https://www.reddit.com/r/amexcanada/comments/1j31ir0/comment/mfwmz5y/

Like, when they say "don't encourage the US" people don't typically mean jumping to Chinese companies instead. Not to mention UnionPay is definitely not as widely supported as Visa or MasterCard.

And while Japan isn't exactly notorious for its human rights violations these days, I kinda doubt JCB cards would be very widely supported. And could you even get one if you're not Japanese?

[โ€“] Tuuktuuk@kbin.melroy.org 2 points 4 months ago

Japan isn't exactly notorious for its human rights violations these days

It isn't, but it actually does a lot of human rights violations. The Japanese justice system is largely based on the idea of "guilty until otherwise proven."
That causes horrific tragedies where families are torn apart just for bad luck. You never did anything, but if they cannot be sure you did not do the crime, they jail you just in case, even for years.